The Sisterhood

by Helen Bryan

  The natives pointed up, too, directly at the setting sun. The sailors nodded and pointed at us, then at the disappearing sun. They pointed at themselves, then at the other men, and shook their heads. They made signs of small people—children we supposed—with their hands, pointed at us, and then shook their heads. The natives looked bewildered, and it would have been amusing if we had not been so frightened. Finally one of the sailors pointed to his codpiece, and made a crude rocking motion with his hips, then shook his head no and pointed at us. Then he pointed at the setting sun again. The commander gasped, stepped back and snapped an order, and to our relief, the warriors disappeared.

  On the beach the sailors made a fire and sleeping place for us some distance from theirs. At first glance the sailors had seemed so much rougher than the few men, priests and pilgrims and beggars, that we saw in the convent that we had been nervous about our situation with them, but as we became better acquainted we learned most were from converso families and they boasted Muslims made the best sailors. They insisted that honor obliged them to regard us as their sisters.

  That night we overheard them discussing what to do when the repairs were finished, whether to sail on in the hope of reaching some known place or whether to turn back and brave the Sea of Fog and Darkness again. And was it safer for the women to stay behind while they sought the best passage, to return for us later, or was it preferable if we took our chances with them? All agreed they could not leave us here alone, and decided to draw lots to select three to remain behind with us.

  As they debated, we huddled together for warmth and had our own discussion. There were already too few sailors to crew the ship. It was not right to separate the men and jeopardize their chance of a return to their families. We finally agreed they must leave us here. Sor Maria Manuela said that the natives had not harmed us; perhaps we could obtain shelter from them. The other three nuns agreed, saying we must trust God and stay. The beatas, one by one, said that they would abide by the decision of the nuns and that the novices should do the same. The other novices, however, wept and wished to go back. I was prepared to trust the commander.

  We all fell quiet. I kept my book by my side at all times, with a pen and the last cake of ink wrapped in the pocket of my habit. I hugged the book to my chest and folded my hands in the sleeves of my habit, trying to meditate on something besides the memory of the commander’s handsome face, muscular arms, and broad shoulders. The sailors finally slept and we watched on, turning our backs to the fire for warmth. Hunger makes us feel the cold sharply. We had eaten so little in recent weeks that our teeth were loose in our mouths.

  Then, without our hearing a sound, we looked up to see ourselves surrounded. A silent group of native women in tunics stared curiously at us. Like the men earlier, they were handsome, straight and tall and with bronze skin that glowed in the firelight, dark haired, with steady gazes and calm manners. They were not armed, but carried cloaks in their arms. They pulled us to our feet and put the cloaks around our shoulders. These cloaks were made of some wonderful material, miraculously soft and warm.

  Then the women put their arms around us and drew us away. Befuddled with cold and sleep, we did not call out to the sailors until it was too late, and by then the women had taken us into the forest, where we came to a low building of stone whose entrance was lit by great torches. It seemed to be a kind of native palace. Inside many fires sent light dancing on objects of gold and silver placed around the rooms. The walls were covered with hangings woven in many colors and patterns, and the same cloth covered some low divans in an inner room where we were seated. The sensation of warmth was almost painful to our aching limbs.

  They brought us bowls of gruel with strips of what appeared to be leather, which was dried meat, like mutton—strange but delicious, though we sucked it instead of chewing on account of our poor teeth. There were brightly colored fruits, sweet and starchy, and silver bowls of some warm bitter drink that made us feel light-headed, yet revived. “Chicha,” the women murmured. We did not know if this was the name of their tribe or a kind of welcome—later we learned it was the favorite drink of the place.

  We were unsure whether to be cheered or frightened by these attentions. Finally we were led to a room with couches piled with more finely woven coverings and left to sleep, which we did at once, deeply. Such splendor to find among the native people! The last thing I remember is thinking how fortunate it was that I had been clutching the book in my arms when the native women appeared. I still had it when I fell asleep.

  The next day we could not tell if we were prisoners or guests. We tried to communicate in signs, but the women’s response was to point to the sky. We nodded vigorously and pointed to the sky and then to ourselves, trying to indicate that we served God who lived in heaven. The women nodded some more and spoke to each other in their language. For the next week we submitted to being cared for, sleeping much of the time.

  After a week we were restored and anxious to return to the sailors. Covered litters arrived, born by men who averted their eyes in fear while we were made comfortable. The litters were lifted onto their shoulders, but we soon realized that instead of returning to the sailors we were traveling toward the mountains! We went on for days, stopping each night at houses, like refugios, where the women who walked behind our litters had hurried ahead to build fires, and prepare food and bedding. We reached the foothills of the great white-capped mountains, where the slopes were terraced for orchards and gardens, just as they were in Andalusia, and strange long-necked beasts stared with human eyes as we passed. We were now worried and frightened.

  Finally we saw buildings in the distance. As we approached the outskirts of what appeared to be a native city, a great procession of women in finer garments than those who had accompanied us came singing toward us. As we alighted, the singing grew louder and we were led into the building, which curiously seemed made of one solid piece of stone. However, when we examined it, we saw blocks of stone marvelously cut to fit seamlessly together. Inside, there were the same kinds of beautiful hangings we had seen in the first house, and fine gold and silver ornaments everywhere. As before, there were many women to wait on us. Then came a tall, beautiful woman with two pretty, graceful girls of about eight and ten who resembled her, all finely dressed and wearing a great many gold ornaments and feathers.

  We guessed that we were being honored by a lady of standing—a queen or a princess perhaps. This elegant lady spoke for a long time, and though we could not understand the words, their graciousness was plain. She waved her hands to indicate the palace and its contents. Then she and her daughters withdrew in a dignified manner, all the native women and slaves prostrating themselves as they went. Our bows seemed inadequate in comparison.

  That night, after a very large and fine meal, we said our prayers and settled on our couches to sleep. All through the night we heard each other turning restlessly and sighing—we were uneasy and very worried about the poor sailors.

  Then God sent us a sign. The next morning after our prayers, we heard the familiar chirping. “Golondrinas!” we exclaimed joyfully. Following the sound we discovered a garden where the dear, familiar birds hopped between glossy plants and vivid flowers, like none we had ever seen, lush and oddly glittering. A novice bent to pluck a flower and drew her hand back quickly with a shriek. The garden was made of silver and gold and precious stones!

  “No food for you here,” said Sor Maria Manuela briskly to the swallows. “We must scatter crumbs for you. And here I think God teaches us a lesson, sisters—if these birds cannot subsist on gold and jewels, we cannot do God’s work if we give way to luxury and comfort. God must have led us here instead of Gran Canaria to establish our mission. We must return to a lifestyle proper for nuns, learn the natives’ language, and make ourselves useful in this place.”

  Her bracing words recalled us to our duty. Our first attempts to assist with the tasks of the household were rebuffed by our scandalized serving women and slaves. Plainly anxious
to fulfill our wishes, they nevertheless tried to prevent our putting a hand to any task, however light. To their dismay we persisted, and in the days that followed, working side by side, we asked the names of things—women, water, food and animals, cloth, washing, sleeping, sunlight, rain, and so on—in the language we came to understand was Quechua. After our evening prayers we shared what we had learned and little by little were able to converse with the women. The most important word in the language seemed to be “Inca,” meaning the country, the people, and their king, all of which are one.

  We had left our belongings airing on the beach and despaired of seeing them again but one day, to our joy, our serving women carried in our trunks. To our surprise our spare habits and shifts and shoes and missals and rosaries, together with our medicine chest, pens and ink, the book on herbs and the medical treatise, were all there. We hung Sor Maria Manuela’s crucifix on the wall of our central room at once, and felt that we had established ourselves a little. We thanked the women and tried to express our relief that our things had not been stolen. The native women were unable to understand what “stolen” meant. When we managed to explain, they were shocked, insisting that in the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the Earth, as they called the country, no one would take what did not belong to him.

  Our ignorance was a source of wonder to the serving women. Little by little we learned that the Inca people worshipped many gods, of whom the sun was the supreme ruler, and the natives’ king was called the Sapa Inca. They believed he was the all-powerful son of the sun god, and revered him beyond expression. The novices scoffed at this as heathen superstition but one of the beatas remarked, “Think how quickly the cold descends as soon as the sun sets, even on a hot day. It is not surprising that their religion looks to the sun, and that they believe without it all the world would remain as cold and dark as the nights we spent on the beach.”

  But it was some time before our conversations with the women allowed us to understand our extraordinary reception by the people here, and how best we might serve God in this place.

  We learned there are native nuns, the Virgins of the Sun, dedicated to the sun god from childhood. Those of noble birth lived a life of strict seclusion in their great house between the royal palace and a great temple, just as convents are often located near a church. Each year there was a great ceremony honoring the sun, with religious processions led by the Sapa Inca himself, followed by feasting and dancing and sacrifices. Virgins of the Sun devoted their lives to weaving the exquisite cloth for the royal garments and making the mead drink on ceremonial occasions, living only among other women, served by virgin servants, and never allowed to see a man or leave their house. They belonged all their lives to the Sapa Inca, their emperor and the sun on earth in human form. Of all men, only the Sapa Inca may see these virgins face-to-face, though by custom he did not exercise this privilege.

  For any other man, setting eyes on a virgin offended the sun and carried dreadful penalties. The maiden was buried alive and the offending man hanged, his family and neighbors killed, all animals destroyed, the village razed, and their fields and crops plowed up.

  These rules were relaxed in the regions into which the land is divided, where there are lesser houses of virgins who also live secluded from men and work for the Inca royal family, but from time to time the Sapa Inca chooses concubines from among them or gives them as wives and concubines to his allies. Usually these lesser virgins serve for a period and return to their homes, with much honor, and often marry.

  Our party seemed to fit into a category of virgins somewhere between the two. In our first encounter with the warriors on the beach, the sailors’ rude gestures not only conveyed the information that we were virgins of the sun god, but also that it was he who had sent us across the water to the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the Earth on great wings, with superhuman guardians in the form of ordinary men. The commander had ordered the women to welcome us as befitted the sun’s handmaidens, and the warriors not to kill the sailors. Instead the commander sent food and slaves to repair the ship, after which the sailors had departed. We prayed they might find themselves safely home.

  We were objects of curiosity and reverence, and we hoped, not suitable concubine material. The handsome woman who visited us with her daughters was not the queen but the commander’s wife. Both had royal Inca blood and it was the custom for such women to maintain close ties to the virgins of the sun, just as the Spanish queen was patroness of Las Golondrinas.

  But despite the hospitality shown to us, we learned this is not a gentle land. Many people were sacrificed during the great ceremonies, especially captives of war, and in times of famine or other hardship, their priests would choose the most beautiful children from among the noble families and take them away to the mountains, where they were anointed and blessed, then sacrificed to act as intermediaries with the gods and plead for the humans down below.

  Sor Maria Manuela came to believe God’s purpose in bringing us here was to end this practice. We knew we must set an example of virtuous living before we could hope to exert any influence among the people. She ordered the women who served us to forego the daily banquets on golden dishes, insisting we would eat as simply as the peasants, maize porridge with vegetables and fruit. The gold and silver ornaments and cups and plates were exchanged for simple pottery bowls, though we kept the beautiful wall hangings for their warmth. We fashioned new wimples of plain native cloth, and mended our habits. Our days had structure and purpose.

  Our preference for plain living met with approval. The next step was to let it be known through our serving women that our virgins were required to serve God not by weaving cloth but by teaching and helping the sick, caring for the poor and crippled and orphans, devising medicines and cures, and instructing girls in these ways of helping others. We gathered that our unusual behavior as virgins was tolerated because the sun god permitted us a certain license not allowed to native virgins.

  This emboldened us to take another step we had decided was necessary if we were not to be enclosed against our will. We sent word to the commander’s wife that it was the custom of our virgins to go about among the people, as God protected us and no harm had ever come to any man from gazing on us. We asked her to intercede with the priests. After a time, a message came back that as we had so far demonstrated our virtue, our customs, though unknown to the Inca, would be honored. Little by little we cautiously ventured outside the building.

  We arranged one of the rooms as our chapel. We filled it with the finest wall hangings of the house, made an altar of a carved block of stone from the garden, and hung a crucifix above it. We used a beautiful hammered native silver bowl as a font for holy water, and torches of the kind the natives use in place of candles. Like the Abbess, Sor Maria Manuela heard our confessions, and the natives referred to her as mamacunya, the term given to the novice-mistress of their virgins. We decided that she should be formally consecrated as the first Mother Superior of the Holy Sisters of Jesus in the Land of the Four Quarters of the World in the Year of Our Lord 1526. It was the first service held in our little chapel, and the ladies of the royal household, including the commander’s wife and daughters, were invited to attend.

  The Inca ladies came dressed for an important ceremonial occasion, in beautiful embroidered robes with trains and jewels and feathers, and watched and listened attentively, gratified to see that our virgins had ceremonies. We had new habits and sang the psalms, anthems, and the prayers of the consecration. The visitors seemed to appreciate our choir, though they were puzzled by the lack of instruments and dancing, which always accompany their ceremonies. When the moment came to consecrate Sor Maria Manuela, we all gathered around her and one at a time laid our hands on her head. She is officially Mother now.

  Afterward the queen and all the ladies withdrew and did not join in our simple feast of celebration. But we all felt deeply satisfied, as if we had somehow established our presence in an official manner. We had turned two rooms into an in
firmary and soon it slowly began to fill with cases beyond the patience or competence of the local doctors—mostly children who were disfigured or feeble-witted, a few who were lame, and several elderly childless widows. In a land where all were responsible for the welfare of others, our efforts met with approval.

  Yet we proceeded cautiously, judging our words and actions against the orderly way things were done here, before the Spanish came. The people lived in a way that reminded us of the bees the nuns kept in Spain, with their workers and their queen bee. Peasants worked hard at their fields for the Sapa Inca. The local authorities ensured that every family had enough for its needs, and if one family fell ill or could not work, others looked after their fields until they recovered. Authorities were punished if any in their supervision were hungry or naked or unprovided for. Young couples received what they needed to marry. Our care for the chronically ill or lame or elderly or those too infirm to work was a contribution to the general welfare, though we had to avoid anything that could be construed as an attempt to usurp the priests’ authority.

  After two years we could survey our progress with satisfaction. We had laid out an herbary and begun to study the native medicines and illnesses that prevailed in order to expand our apothecary. We had set aside a room for a school, had a small flock of goats, some ducks, and had begun digging a vegetable garden when scandalized local women arrived to insist on doing it for us. They planted seeds for gourds and maize and shoots of the tuberous vegetable called “potatoes” that are delicious when roasted in the coals. The swallows made nests in the roof, and sang to us of Spain.

  We tried to persuade the local nobles to bring their daughters to our school, but were only successful with the commander’s two daughters because their father wished them to learn to read and write in our language. They were delightful girls, very pretty, quick to learn, and sweet natured. They could calculate and do sums rapidly using an intricately knotted piece of string, and we taught them to read and write in Spanish using lives of the saints—they were fond of stories of the martyrs, the more gruesome the better.